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Et tu, Brüno?

Yeah, the movie's funny. Sometimes it's very funny. But when the biggest celebrities who get punked by Brüno are Paula Abdul and Ron Paul, something's gone wrong.

Sacha Baron Cohen follows up Kazakhstan TV host Borat with gay Austrian fashion reporter Brüno. But where Borat’s lunacy left people weak with laughter, 'Brüno' falls short of the great comedy mark. (SUPPLIED PHOTO)

Yeah, the movie's funny. Sometimes it's very funny. But when the biggest celebrities who get punked by Brüno are Paula Abdul and Ron Paul, something's gone wrong.

Nor are any of the contents in Sacha Baron Cohen's new comedy likely to produce the same degree of convulsive laughter as that epic battle between two hairy naked men in the movie's much-cherished predecessor.

Here, too many scenes fizzle out before reaching that peak of lunacy. Other sequences are so clearly staged that Cohen's comedic ambitions are less compelling than questions of what's real and what's phony. Elsewhere – as in the movie's climax, an ultimate fighting bout that becomes a showcase for a different variety of man-on-man action – the victims of Cohen's pranks are the easiest of easy targets.

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To be fair, the British comedian had no small challenge in following up 2006's Borat: Cultural Learnings of America to Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.

Borat was not the kind of garden-variety hit that reaps huge box-office figures on its first Friday only to vanish from viewers' memories by Saturday.

No, this was a paradigm shift for screen comedy. While the act of pranking unsuspecting folks on camera was as old as the culturally insensitive stereotype of the "funny foreigner" (Borat's ancestors include Peter Sellers in The Party and Bill Dana as José Jiménez), no one had ever deployed these tactics with Cohen's tenacity, ingenuity or savagery.

The idea that Borat was a game-changer was best expressed by The Simpsons writer-producer George Meyer to Judd Apatow after a screening for Hollywood comedy bigwigs: "I feel like someone just played me Sgt. Pepper's for the first time."

Audiences were just as excited – the movie's worldwide gross topped $260 million (U.S.).

It was soon announced that Brüno, the flamboyantly gay host of an Austrian TV fashion show, would be the next character from Da Ali G Show to get a screen spinoff.

But one hitch was that Cohen had himself become a celebrity. So it's not so surprising that Brüno's new onscreen hijinks rarely include his signature practice on Cohen's TV show: eliciting nonsensical prattle from fashionistas and celebrities. After all, these are the people most likely to recognize Brüno's creator.

Instead, we get a Borat-like quest of discovery across America, where the character encounters many people too trusting or too stupid to spot the put-on, as well as others who seem to be well aware of "vassup!"

Fired from his job hosting Funkyzeit mit Brüno after a fashion-show incident involving an all-Velcro suit, Brüno heads to the States to become "the biggest Austrian superstar since Hitler."

Alas, a stint as an extra on TV's Medium ends as poorly as the interview he conducts with Abdul. Lacking furniture, he asks the American Idol judge to sit on the backs of Mexican workers – though visibly disturbed, she consents.

A focus group assembled to view Brüno's celeb chat show is then tormented by the sight of his dancing and – in the movie's most memorable visual gag – a talking penis. Nor is former Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul impressed when Brüno piles on the strawberries and oysters in hopes of getting him to co-star in a sex tape.

Brüno soon departs his natural hunting grounds of Los Angeles for other environments. A trip to "the Middle Earth" to earn renown for brokering a peace plan hits a snag when he fails to note the difference between Hamas and hummus.

In the movie's final stretch – and it is a stretch, the film feeling over-long, even at 83 minutes – Cohen returns to America to dupe the favourite prey of prank-happy comics: Southerners and Christians.

Having decided that being straight is a prerequisite for fame, Brüno tries to "quit guys" with the help of two "gay conversion" counsellors and a group of increasingly hostile hunters.

Though Brüno is as blithely idiotic as Borat, his aggressive displays of vanity and sexuality make him a more provocative figure. Yet Cohen's efforts to expose his subjects' homophobia do little to challenge feelings of fear and loathing in his own viewing audience.

The movie was reportedly toned down after gay members of the entertainment industry objected to scenes in an earlier version. That may explain why many gags end so abruptly.

Or maybe Brüno's makers realized that their methods produced much spottier results this time around.

Brüno's greatest outrages here will still elicit howls and shrieks, as well they should. But our fabulous Austrian friend is no comedy revolutionary, only a cruel and silly stereotype in leopard-print underwear.

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